Nintendo is suing a streamer that reportedly released many games before release

Key conclusions

• Nintendo is suing a Colorado man for streaming pirated copies of Switch games.
• The company claims the content creator has streamed footage of unreleased Switch games more than 50 times since 2022 and even mocked Nintendo after some of its channels were shut down.
• Nintendo is seeking more than $7.5 million in damages.

Nintendo is suing a small-time content creator who allegedly spent months live-streaming pirated Switch games before their street date. In addition to sharing unauthorized footage from likes Mario and Luigi: Brotherhood and The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdomthe streamer even mocked the Japanese gaming giant's legal team.

The Switch was first hacked in 2018, shortly after its one-year anniversary, thanks to a physical vulnerability that has since been patched. This accelerated the development of emulators for the console and allowed pirates to distribute Switch games before they were officially released, according to some legal arguments Nintendo has made in the past.

Some of those claims have been echoed in a new lawsuit Nintendo has filed against Jesse Keigin, a Colorado resident who runs a series of social media sites called Every Game Guru. The complaint, filed in Colorado federal court on Nov. 6 and first seen by 404 Media, alleges that Keygin repeatedly infringed Nintendo's copyrights by live streaming unreleased Switch games. It continued to do so even after the company's lawyers filed “dozens” of copyright takedown notices, and in total it has published ten Switch games more than 50 times since 2022, Nintendo claims.

A streamer taunted Nintendo's legal team after his content was removed

After this cat-and-mouse game had already been going on for a while, Keygin even decided to take a shot at the Switch manufacturer. “Defendant also emailed Nintendo saying he had 'a thousand channels of vodka' and that he could 'do this all day,'” the complaint states. In one of his last broadcasts, Keigin hosted a stream Super Mario Jamboree Party via Kick at least six days before the game's official release on October 17, Nintendo claims. The company says it also found evidence that it was streaming a leaked version The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom via YouTube on September 21, five days before the title officially hits digital and physical store shelves.

The defendant also emailed Nintendo saying he had “a thousand channels of vodka” and that he could “do this all day.”

Each gaming guru allegedly profited from their illegal streams

Nintendo claims Keighin was mostly streaming pirated copies of its games, which he played through an emulator. He's also been accused of posting links to Switch emulators like Yuzu and Ryujinx as part of his streams, which Nintendo sees as an act of actively promoting piracy. The gaming giant said that after Keigin's monetized YouTube channel with around 1,730 subscribers was taken down, the content creator began including the CashApp handle in his streams, signaling that he remains committed to continuing to monetize live streams of pirated Switch games .

Nintendo is now seeking millions in damages

Nintendo is seeking $150,000 for each count of copyright infringement that Keygin is found guilty of. Since the plaintiff alleges that the defendant streamed unreleased Switch games more than 50 times, this suggests that the total amount of damages he is seeking exceeds $7.5 million.

Source: Nintendo [PDF]